Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel

Ok, so I finally watched Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel. I have been waiting for this for months; it is one of my favorite franchises and one of my favorite cartoons mashed together in a 44 minute special. So did it live up to my expectations? Needless to say, it did not have a snowflake's chance in Hell. There were so many things wrong with it; I don't know where to start. Actually, strike that. I know exactly where to start. 

How about we start with the synopsis? The story goes that the kids are in space surfing asteroid fields (Because Phineas and Ferb, that's why.) When Dr. Doofenshmirtz fires a Powerdraininator off into space on accident. It bounces off the space station the kids built, and into NewYork, and by the insane kind of constant series of coincidences that only exist in the Phineas and Ferb Universe, hit four Marvel Superheros. Hulk, Thor, Spiderman, and Ironman, draining them of their power. Go figure. This takes place right when they have the four villains they were fighting defeated, (Venom Whiplash, Modok, and Red Skull) But not before the villains figure it out and wipe the floor with them. The Heroes then go to the S.H.I.E.L.D Helecarrier, and find out that the beam came from Danville. They meet up with Phineas and Ferb as it was their space station that the beam bounced off of, and try to get their powers back. At the Same Time, The four villains find out that Dr. Doofenshmirtz is the one who fired the beam, and go to Danville to try and get the Powerdraininator for themselves. There. NOW I don't know where to start.

How about with my favorite Marvel Hero, Venom. The biggest problem I have with him is that the writers made Venom one of the villains. Now I can somewhat forgive them since they never specified who this Venom was. But seeing as they did not specify, I will assume that it is Eddie Brock, who is the most well-known Venom. The problem with this is that Eddie Brock Venom was known as the "Lethal Protector" He was a Hero who slaughtered anyone who wanted to harm an innocent. Yes, he killed people, but only if they were evil, or Spiderman whom he believed to be evil. He was never a bad guy, at the worst; he could be considered an anti-hero. So why did they make him one of the Villains, and not specify that it was Mac Gargan? All they had to do was refer to him as “Mac” or “Gargan” and it would have been acceptable. But since they did not call him by anything other than “Venom” the viewers are forced to assume that it is Eddie Brock. This REALLY bothers me, as Venom is being turned more and more into a bad character, instead of a misunderstood, righteous, Christian character.

Second is that there is a huge problem with the continuity. Not just on the Marvel side, but the Phineas and Ferb side too. I have no problem with the writers introducing new aspects of the characters that have never been spoken about before, but I DO have a problem with it when the new information contradicts what has previously happened. There are a few examples of this, but the one that bothers me most from the Phineas and Ferb side is their power suit.  One of the Running deus ex machine in the series, is their power suit “The Beak” originally, it was made to be the ultimate sport suit that could withstand their world’s most dangerous skate ramp or something. The point is that it was designed with the purpose of withstanding any form of elemental damage. But in this episode, it is not waterproof. There is a point where they get splashed by little more than a puddle, and the whole suit gets fried. It made no sense. They even say that they cannot go outside when it is raining. Now this may seem somewhat logical, but we are talking about bloody PHINEAS AND FERB here! They can build an entire functioning space station in under an hour, and they can’t figure out how to waterproof their super powered suit of awesomeness that was already waterproofed in prior episodes!!?? What the Bugger!!?? And the same problem happens when they rebuild the suit, they somehow don’t have enough time to fix it, even though they originally built it in less time than they had to repair the damage. This is a kids Disney cartoon, be as illogical as you want, but don’t insult your audience –no matter how old they are- by changing the rules of the universe that you wrote!

Now for the Marvel continuity issues. First of all.... All of the Hero’s powers. None of them have their actual powers. For instance, Hulk is not an anger filled mass of muscle that can’t control his rage, or a brilliant physicist. He is a green man who is super strong. In fact, they make him pretty stupid even though he knows everything that Bruce Banner knows. This further does not make any sense by the fact that once he loses his powers, he STAYS GREEN. He does not revert back to Bruce Banner –who would be overjoyed that his powers were taken away and that he can finally live as a normal human without the ever present threat of murdering a country on accident- he remains as the Hulk, who somehow is not strong anymore. Why? It makes no sense! And when Baljeet gets his powers (which by the way are never taken away or resolved) he is more like the Hulk than the Hulk is! He gets angry and becomes the green monster we all know and love, and when he calms down, he reverts back to the small Indian boy. Why did they do this? They aren’t even following their own rules!!!! WHYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!???????

Odd how with the muscle mass of a bodybuilder, he is apparently as strong as a child.

Then there is Spiderman, whom everyone tends to forget also has super strength. For some reason, they make a joke out of him accidently getting Hulk’s powers (He does not go green when he gets angry, you dirty rotten writers who are so bloody schizophrenic that udgflihulfiauscrgkbvdzyft !) He is just really strong, which they show by him lifting a huge machine. But my very first thought when I saw that was, “Spiderman could do that anyway, so how do you know that he got Hulk’s powers?” Also, his web shooters are not a power, but for some reason, he cannot use them when he loses his powers, and suddenly can again when he gets his powers back.

You aren't already?

Next is Ironman. Now I can go with the suit losing its operating power, and becoming useless, but if that is the case, why is he not dead? Or did the writers forget about the GLOWING CIRCLE IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS CHEST!!?? I mean HOLY CRAP! Doofenshmirtz should have killed Ironman! And even if this is after he resolves the whole power plant in his chest keeping him alive issue, then wouldn’t they just be able to put in a new power cell and be as good as new? Seriously, this should have been nothing more than an inconvenience to Toney.

 Actually to be honest, I kind of like the idea of them pushing a corps around all day.

Lastly is Thor. So Doofenshmirtz’s machine is the Powerdraininator. (I love his machines :3) It drains the superheroes of their power. So when Thor gets hit by it, he can’t use Mjolnir anymore. He even leaves in on the street in New York because he cannot even hold it. That makes sense. I can go with that. It would have been better if the Hammer lost all of its power as well, but I’ll ignore that. The problem is when Iron Man accidently gets Thor’s powers, he can’t use Mjolnir because as Thor tells him, “It is not about Power, it is about worthiness.” Which is all great and everything, but the machine is not called the Worthinessdraininator. It is the Powerdraininator. So if Toney Stark still cannot use the hammer, even after obtaining Thor’s powers, then why can’t Thor use the Hammer? He also indirectly, sort of claims that he has no powers without the Hammer. But they are not including that by himself, he is still the strongest of all the Asguardians, and is nearly invulnerable to physical harm, and much more. I even went to read his Wikipedia page just to be sure, and holy crap, even I did not know a lot of the things he could do! Even without Mjolnir! Also, he states that he can only use lightning attacks with Mjolnir, but that is not true. Using lightning is part of his natural Asguardian ability as being the son of Odin. He only used Mjolnir to focus his attacks. So yeah. Toney should have been just fine with Thor’s powers, instead of feeling useless.

Now on to the Villains. I already covered Venom to some degree, but I am going to go a little more in depth now with the problem of his character instead of him merely being a villain. First, as a minor issue, but still enough to bother me, is that he does not have his tongue. I understand that this is Disney and needs to have a G/PG rating, but how could they leave out his tongue? This is a central physical design! Second, he never once refers to himself as “We.” In fact, he barely has any lines at all. His whole character seems to be just the symbiote, instead of a human with the symbiotic powers. At one point, you see him step in one of Doofenshmirtz’s traps for Parry the Platypus, and the symbiote curls back out of the trap to reveal that there is not a leg there at all! What!!?? WHAT!!!!????? No one is controlling Venom!!?? Why not!? Symbiotes cannot survive without hosts! They feed off the thoughts and emotions of their hosts! It is what they live off of! Why doesn’t it have a host!!?? This is WRONG! 

AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!!!!!!

Now let’s talk about Whiplash. I’ll be honest. I had no idea who he was until Red Skull called him by name. I spent the entire time before that trying to figure out who he was. He does not look like whiplash, he does not talk like whiplash, the only similarity he has is that he uses energy whips, and those still don’t fully reveal who he is. He is just such a boring and useless character in the show, I don’t even have that much to say about him. So yeah.  On to Modok.

So Modok. Yeah. Modok. I am pretty sure the only reason they added him was so they could use ONE joke from Doofenshmirtz. He is so useless and pointless, I cannot think of anything else they needed him for. Why is he even on the team? Modok doesn’t team up with people, he is a psychic god that is nearly all powerful by himself. Why is he with these losers? Actually, that is probably why he is standing in the back ground all the time, and never says anything. He knows he is better than this, and is just waiting for his chance to take control. I also hate how Red Skull uses him like a trash can. Whenever they need to kill anyone, he says that they will just give them to Modok to destroy. Why? You can’t pull the trigger? Venom can’t eat their brains? Whiplash can’t cut them to ribbons? Why give them specifically to Modok EVERY TIME?

Red Skull is probably the only character whom I can’t say anything bad about specifically other than the fact that Captain America is not one of the Heroes, and he thinks that Modok is a living trashcan for humans. They did his character rather well, and even threw in that he knew Doofenshmirtz’s home country, which totally makes sense, seeing as Drusselstein is a parody of Germany to begin with. I liked Red Skull in this. There is one major problem, but I will talk about that later.

Another big problem with the whole show was the voice acting of the Marvel characters. It was so emotionless I found myself muttering the lines under my breath with the right voice fluctuation. Spiderman is constantly cracking quips at everyone and everything, but in a tone that makes me think he is asleep throughout the whole show. Hulk does not have that many lines, but when he does speak, it is awkward, and makes him sound stupid which bothers me. This is supposed to be the intelligent Hulk, not the brainless one. If he was the brainless version, he would be destroying Danville. And then there is the Red Skull. There is a running joke throughout the episode, that no one can understand what he is saying due to his accent. But the problem is that he has a very mild accent. If anything Doofenshmirtz ‘s accent is far thicker than Red Skull’s. This present’s further confusion as Doofenshmirtz cannot understand what Red Skulls says most of the time due to his “thick accent.” This really bothered me, and was a huge distraction while watching the episode.

Now is all that to say that I hated the show? Hell no! I LOVED IT! This is one of the best crossovers I have ever seen on Television! They had so many good jokes, and the actual plot was fantastic! The story made sense, and felt like something that would really happen in-universe! I was laughing out loud through the whole thing, and did not stop until long after it ended! I loved Stan Lee’s cameos (Yes, plural!) and his closer was phenomenal! He reminded me of the Merchant of Cabbage! XD Even that one joke I was saying earlier was the only reason they added Modok, was AWESOME, and even turned out to be a Brick Joke to add to the perfect hilarity of the first part! I loved Doofenshmirtz’s part in the story, even though it did seem like the same plot device from the Phineas and Ferb movie, it still worked out well.They even threw in a DR. Who joke that initially may seem kind of random, but actually fit the situation perfectly, and was not at all out of place.

The only problem I have with the story itself is the sub plot of Phineas and Candace. That seemed really pointless, unneeded, and maybe a little out of character for Phineas. The same goes for Isabella’s problem. But whereas we see build up to the moment with Phineas and Candace, Isabella’s issue seems to come out of nowhere. All of the sudden she is complaining ad crying about something, then she never speaks of it again, and it is never resolved. It is just a  “HI!... BYE!” moment I do not know why they threw it in there.

Overall, it is still a good show that I would suggest to anyone who likes either franchise. Watch it, laugh, enjoy the nerdgasm with me, and geek out over how awesome the story is. It has it's flaws, but for the most part, they are quite easy to overlook. I give this show an 8/10. Now go watch it. NOW.